Possibilities

My son recently came home from school with an assignment that I just had to get involved with, it seems his teacher gave him an open ended assignment with very little in the way of rules or structure so naturally he had questions. The assignment was to pick any topic and learn as much as you can and when you feel you're ready to give a report on it, pick a day, and let the teacher know what the report is about. Seems simple enough right ?
Well I've been taking a CADD course through a school near to us for the past little while and my son decided that he would do the report on CADD. He had figured he would give a small speech about who invented it and then do a demo on what it did and that was that.
I had a different thought, I asked him to look up who had invented the program, then I asked him to explain why the program was so important for developing new products. He started his research and found that CADD had greatly sped up the creative process and with the CADD programs available today a person could actually create and test the product to ensure safety and value.
I asked him to explain how this is affecting the world both economically and physically and to compare the process to the way in which products were conceived and then brought to completion 30 years ago.
He was a little unsure about the entire line of thinking so I had to help him with it but once he started to understand it a little switch turned on in his head, now he was beginning to think this wasn't as simple as he had originally thought, and CADD was more than just a drawing program.
Between the two of us we began to research and get numbers for his project, the discussions we had involved a lot of what if's and speculation about the future of the entire creative process. Then it happened, I found a video on you tube, a video of a 3d printer, one which could take a detailed drawing in 3d from a CADD program and actually print out a solid resin 3d model, straight from the mind of the designer, to a CADD program,  to a workable model, all in no time at all.
That little switch I was talking about coming on in his mind, this is where the light bulb started to grow brighter and brighter, we sat and talked about it for a while and my son was just amazed by this, the what if's started to go towards a greener planet, less warehousing, less shipping, cheaper parts, all the way to what if,,, we could break down the resin composite material just as easy and then recycle it back to a printable powder again.
My son is 13 years old, and like most parents I worry about where the world is headed and what kind of legacy we're leaving our kids, but today I'm a little less worried, a 13 year old boy understood where science could help the environment, and in the process create a safer, better product, faster than we would have ever though imaginable only 20 years ago.

I have to tell you, I was just as excited as he was, it's amazing what you can learn when you actually start to look for answers . Check out the video on you tube, it's an eye opener.